#86 | DCX - Perspectives and insights on digital customer experience
The Five Laws of Stratospheric CX Success; Applying the Laws in Your Day to Day; DCX Poll; Links to Industry news and the DCX Thought Leader Profile of the Week
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The Five Laws of Stratospheric CX Success
We all know that delivering exceptional customer experiences is crucial for business success today. However, in our quest to implement the latest technologies and metrics, we sometimes lose sight of the fundamental principles that should guide our CX strategies.
I strongly believe that the profound wisdom in the classic book "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg and John David Mann can enlighten our work in CX. One of the most influential business and personal development books I have read shares the story of Joe, a young and eager businessman who is struggling to land a new client named Pindar. He encounters a group of mentors who teach him the "Five Laws of Stratospheric Success:"
The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than what you take in payment. Successful people think about creating value for others first.
The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. Focus on serving versus selling.
The Law of Influence: Your influence and satisfaction are determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first. Prioritize the well-being of others.
The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. Relate to people genuinely and authentically.
The Law of Receptivity: The key to living richly is being open to receiving. Remain open-minded and teachable.
The core of these laws may have been designed for entrepreneurs, but they hold a special significance for me and the work we do in CX. Elevating customer experiences and enriching lives is at the heart of our mission. Combining these timeless principles with modern CX management practices can inspire innovation and keep the customer at the center of everything we do.
The Five Laws of Stratospheric CX Success
So, here I present an enhanced version of “The Go-Giver” laws for customer-obsessed leaders like you.
1. The Law of Customer Ecstasy
Anticipate unmet needs, then deliver responsive solutions that surprise and delight.
In CX, delivering more value than what customers expect is crucial. This means going beyond basic service requirements to create memorable, positive experiences. For instance, anticipate customer needs and offer proactive solutions or personalize interactions to make customers feel valued and understood.
2. The Law of Customer Legacy
Measure reach, satisfaction, and lifetime value. Optimize across segments and the entire journey.
Your success in CX can be measured by the number of people you serve and how well you serve them. Measure your reach, customer satisfaction, lifetime value and retention. Set goals across these metrics for each customer segment and optimize experiences to maximize them across the entire end-to-end journey. Analyze customer data to understand contextual needs and proactively serve customers more meaningfully over their lifetime.
3. The Law of Customer Advocacy
Earn trust and loyalty by championing the customer internally. Become their advocate.
Prioritizing customer interests is key to effective CX. Be an advocate for customers within your organization, advising leadership on how to optimize policies, processes, and offerings. Encourage collaboration across departments to deliver integrated customer experiences. Promote a culture of customer centricity through empathy training and real-life examples. By positioning yourself as the customer's advocate, you can drive transformation and boost loyalty, satisfaction, and referrals.
4. The Law of Compassionate Connections
Ensure every interaction conveys respect, understanding, and care.
Authenticity and empathy are crucial in customer interactions. Train your team to be genuine and empathetic. Authentic interactions build trust and a stronger emotional connection with your brand. Ensure every interaction conveys genuine respect, understanding, and care for the customer. Infuse warmth and heart into each touchpoint to foster compassionate connections vital for enduring customer relationships anchored in humanity.
5. The Law of Continuous Improvement
Embrace feedback with openness and humility. Continuously learn, improve, and innovate.
Embrace customer feedback with openness, gather insights from various sources, and use tools like sentiment analysis to process data. Improve pain points systematically and act quickly on urgent fixes. Prototype experimental solutions to untapped needs and measure effectiveness through customer validation. Continuously pilot emerging technologies to enhance experiences and sustain positive momentum for elevating the customer experience over time.
The Laws of Stratospheric Success from "The Go-Giver" provide guiding philosophies for CX professionals seeking to make a genuine positive impact through their work. While techniques and technologies will evolve, anchoring our CX strategies in these fundamentals will ensure we always stay grounded in our higher purpose - creating value for others.
Whether through personalizing interactions, facilitating feedback loops, empowering employees, or proactively engaging communities, we must keep raising the bar for meaningful customer experiences. When we commit to adding value, serving others, and remaining open and authentic, we become elevated CX leaders who don't just drive business results but change lives.
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Applying the Laws in Your Day-to-Day
"The Go-Giver" is a remarkable book that inspired "The Five Laws of Stratospheric CX Success." These laws are adaptable principles that can be customized to suit our individual contexts. By creatively implementing these laws, we can overcome obstacles and achieve sustainable success by prioritizing service to others, which is vital to both personal and business growth. I strongly believe that these laws have the potential to transform any business and make it a customer-centric organization.
While the Five Laws provide guidance for elevating CX, implementing them can present challenges. Solutions exist to stay the course:
Delighting Customers
Challenge: Short-term metrics like sales targets can distract teams from long-term customer lifetime value.
Solution: Ensure that all customer-facing roles are aligned with the company's values by training them on value-based metrics that prioritize customer benefits and foster win-win relationships. Encourage and reward behaviors that go above and beyond to surprise and delight customers, ultimately building strong, long-lasting relationships that enrich lives for years to come.
Measuring Relationships
Challenge: Misaligned incentives across sales, marketing, product, and service prevent a unified CX strategy.
Solution: To enhance the overall experience of customers, I recommend creating a comprehensive set of success metrics that focus on satisfaction, referrals, and retention. These metrics should be developed collaboratively across all departments to optimize the entire customer journey. Additionally, I suggest incentivizing leaders based on these metrics to encourage their active participation in driving customer-centric initiatives.
Championing Customers
Challenge: Internal politics, lack of accountability, and siloed structures can sever the outside-in view of customer needs.
Solution: The solution lies in executives walking the talk to role model customer obsession. Create a Customer Advisory Council for sharing insights across silos when co-creating innovations. Appoint Customer Experience Leaders accountable for empathy training workshops that tell real customer stories. Incentivize all employees to take CX ownership by including related KPIs in performance evaluations and celebrating experience improvements. These tactics facilitate an outside-in view by embedding the customer voice within the organizational culture.
Connecting with Compassion
Challenge: Scaling empathetic human interactions alongside efficient automation.
Solution: Establish guidelines for adding warmth to robotic interfaces. Train staff to relate to customers with compassion. Use scripts as guides, not replacements. Monitor interaction sentiment. Empower teams to customize responses. This combination of automation and human interactions delivers respectful service.
Continuous Improvement
Challenge: Being overwhelmed by the influx of unstructured customer feedback data across channels.
Solution: Implement listening posts to gather feedback, use automation and AI to process data, quantify insights, and prioritize the most urgent pain points. Prototype experimental solutions and maintain a growth mindset focused on constant learning and innovation. This cycle will equip you to stay ahead of emerging needs.
We all have opportunities to lose our way in the face of obstacles, frustrations, change, and uncertainty. What centering principles help guide your journey when things feel off track? I hope that by looking at these laws through the lens of CX, you’re inspired to re-discover the universal wisdom already within you.
What creative ways might you adapt and apply them in your role to develop extraordinarily enriching experiences for those you serve? By unleashing these laws as dynamic living values embodied through your unique gifts and personality, you transform both metrics and lives. That is the ultimate win-win we get to champion each day.
DCX LinkedIn Poll of the Week
This week, I asked our colleagues in the Customer Experience Professionals Group on Linkedin, What Skill is Most Essential for Success in Customer Experience Management?
In this week’s poll, The distribution of votes is quite telling about the current sentiment in the CX professional community.
Cross-functional Collaboration taking the lead in the poll suggests that many professionals believe that success in CX management isn't just about understanding the customer or analyzing data; it's about breaking silos within an organization to ensure a seamless customer journey.
This skill underscores the importance of various departments working together, from marketing and sales to customer support and product development. The idea is that when different functions come together, they can create a more holistic and integrated customer experience that aligns with the company's overall strategy and goals.
Customer Empathy, with 26% of votes, is the second most valued skill. This is no surprise, as empathizing with customers is a cornerstone of understanding their needs and pain points, which is crucial for designing experiences that resonate on a personal level.
Data & Analytics has a notable 21% of the votes. This choice is indicative of the growing recognition of data's role in making informed decisions that can enhance the customer experience. Businesses rely on data to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and feedback, which can then inform CX strategies.
Lastly, Business Acumen received the least votes at 3%, which might seem surprising given that understanding the business aspects is critical to aligning customer experience strategies with business objectives. However, this result might indicate that professionals feel a solid grasp of business is a foundational skill but not the most critical one for CX's success specifically.
In my experience, these skills are not mutually exclusive, and the most effective CX strategies integrate all four.
What are your thoughts?
Industry News, Ideas, and Insights
The Amazon app on your phone just got a cool AI feature | Digital Trends
Amazon has released a new GenAI chatbot named Rufus to assist with online shopping. It can answer questions and make product recommendations based on customer reviews and web information. This feature is currently in beta testing and will be released to more users soon.
The Enduring Power of Data Storytelling in the Generative AI Era (mit.edu)
Just read this piece from MIT Sloan Review that dives into why telling a story with your data still matters, even with all the AI tech we've got today. It's like, even though AI can crunch numbers in its sleep, there's something about a well-told visual story that just hits differently, especially when you're trying to make a point or make a decision. They have this cool guide on when to let AI take the wheel and when to stick to the good old graphs and charts. It's pretty useful for striking the right balance in the AI era.
Sharing some news from the home front. In 2023, Frontier Communications delivered a massive reduction in customer care call times, saving a whopping '50 years' of what would have been spent on the phone. Under the leadership of CEO Nick Jeffery, the company has seen a dramatic turnaround, improving customer service by addressing every potential source of complaint or friction. This effort included simplifying bills, enhancing online processes, and introducing a new app.
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DCX Thought Leader Profile of the Week
Every week, I introduce you to another inspiring professional from LinkedIn who has the potential to make a significant difference in your life and career.
This week’s thought leader is Renata Liuzzi, founder and CEO of Axis Partners.
Renata Liuzzi is an accomplished professional with over 16 years of experience in Customer Experience, Innovation, Digital Transformation, and Business Strategy. She has worked in four countries and significantly impacted numerous Fortune 500 companies.
Currently, Renata is the CEO & Founder of Axis Partners, a strategy boutique consultancy firm that offers a unique approach to innovation and customer experience.
Renata has an MBA from IE Business School, a Master's Degree in Motorsports, and a Strategy, Innovation, and Design Thinking Diploma from MIT and Columbia University. In addition, she holds certifications in Lean Six Sigma, Artificial Intelligence from MIT, and Operational Efficiency from APICS.
Before founding Axis Partners, Renata directed the Customer Experience division for Emaar Group and Meraas Holding in the Middle East. She also held the role of Regional Customer Head of 'Ernst & Young Growth Solutions' for the Middle East, India, and North Africa. Before that, she gained extensive expertise in management consulting with Accenture, where she worked in the UK, Europe, and South America.
Renata is passionate about learning and sharing knowledge, and she serves as a Visiting Lecturer and Startup Mentor at IE Business School, imparting wisdom to innovative startups.
In addition to her professional pursuits, Renata is involved in volunteer work, particularly in assisting refugees in Lesbos, Greece, as part of 'Project Salam', which reflects her commitment to social impact and collaborative problem-solving.
She is also an avid traveler and a coffee enthusiast, and she owns a coffee shop in Spain that brings together flavors from different countries.
Thank you for reading this week.
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One More Thing
I want to share some of the exciting content and programs that I have created for your personal and professional growth:
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-Mark